Challenge Success: Finding Balance with Dr. Denise Pope

Dr. Dan welcomes the amazing educator, author, and co-founder of Challenge Success. Dr. Denise Pope on this episode. Today’s show focuses on helping our children and our schools (and ultimately our families) help our children find balance and deal with stress. This is a provocative topic and will challenge parents everywhere. Dr. Pope explains success is not linear. Her work aims to turn our thinking about learning, education, and success upside down (just like her logo!). Dr. Pope believes success is measured over the course of a lifetime (*not one semester!) and believes that our society has become too focused on grades, test scores, and performance, leaving little time for kids to develop the necessary skills to become resilient, ethical, and motivated learners. Dr. Dan and Dr. Pope dive deep into the topic of wellbeing and why she wants us all to move away from the narrow notion of success and expand our definition of it. Our children are suffering (as a result of sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety and more – all triggered by stress) and it has to stop. Dr. Pope share with Dr. Dan solutions and how Challenge Success provides families and schools with practical, research-based tools they need to create a more balanced and academically fulfilling life for their kids. Finally Dr. Pope’s discussion about the topic of an engaged child and student is revolutionary. This concept applies to parents and students alike. The whole child matters! Dr. Pope’s Parent Footprint moment is very insightful and also personal. The story about picking up her own daughter in first grade and always asking how she did on her spelling test was a light-bulb moment because it gave her insight into the stress her own child was experiencing as a result of this conversation. It became an important a-ha moment in her own parenting journey and of course in her work. More about Dr. Pope: Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where she specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. Challenge Success is an expanded version of the SOS: Stressed-Out Students project that Dr. Pope founded and directed from 2003-2008. She is the author of, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001), which was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal, 2001, and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids (Jossey-Bass, 2015). Watch this free video to learn more about Dr. Dan and Parent Footprint Awareness Training®.

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